The Cat, The Devil, The Last Escape (11 page)

Morgan nodded. He looked companionably at Andy and was quiet.

Randall listened to several more petty complaints from other inmates, then he tried to draw Lee out. “You were transferred down from Springfield, Fontana. That means your health has improved.”

Lee didn't care to discuss his weakness in front of these men. Didn't Randall have any sense? “Springfield had a new bunch of men coming in, they needed the space,” he said. He clammed up and would answer no more questions, scowling at Randall until the counselor turned to another inmate.

At the end of the session, as they headed for the door
Andy Trotter laid a hand on Morgan Blake's arm. “Stay steady, man. I'd like to talk, have a cup of coffee, but I have to get to work.”

Lee moved out behind them. The ground shook as, beyond the wall, a train thundered and screamed, passing the prison. Lee was getting used to their freedom call, to their beckoning. He'd started to turn away from the other men when Blake fell into step with him, and again that searching look. “Sorry I came on so strong back there. I know that doesn't do any good.” Blake's frown as he watched Lee seemed to hold some question about Lee himself.

Warily Lee said, “Why do you care what I think?”

Blake colored, lowered his gaze, and moved away. Lee felt relief but then, on impulse, he stepped up beside Blake again. “Come on, kid. Let's go down to the mess hall, see if we can wrangle that coffee.”

Even as he said it, he wondered what he was doing. A few minutes over a cup of coffee could get him uncomfortably involved, could gain him a persistent sidekick that he didn't want hanging around. This guy needed a friend. And Lee wasn't interested. He knew nothing about Blake or about Blake's crime. He didn't know whether Blake's trial had been fair or rigged. He didn't want to know. He knew only that any friendship, in prison, could end up the kiss of death.

B
RAD
F
ALON
WASN
'
T
finished with the Blake family. Having skillfully finessed Morgan into the federal pen, his full attention turned to Becky and the child. They had been staying with Caroline Tanner but it looked now as if they'd moved back home again just as he'd hoped they'd do. Last night he had cruised by meaning, if he saw no one about, to jimmy the back door and slip inside.

But the Tanner woman's white van was parked in the drive beside Becky's car, there was another car behind it that he didn't recognize, and the living room and kitchen lights burned bright behind the drawn drapes. Easing his car along past the house beneath the overhanging oaks he had parked for a few minutes, looking back, watching the house, wondering what was going on, wondering what Becky might be up to.

But now, this late morning, there was no car at all in the drive. There was no room for a car in the small garage, he knew it was stacked with boxes of automotive parts and new tires for Morgan's shop. He remained parked for a few moments, scanning the neighborhood. He saw no one in any of the yards, no one looking out a window. Parking half a block
down, he walked back beneath the tree shadows to Becky's front porch.

Having studied the lock on earlier visits, he quickly inserted a thin screwdriver, tripped the simple device, and let himself in. Locking the door behind him he made a leisurely tour of the rooms to be certain the place was empty. In the kitchen he opened the refrigerator, drank some milk from the bottle, took out a bowl of cold spaghetti, found a spoon in one of the drawers. He ate half of it, then put the bowl back. The kitchen was too neat, the counters scrubbed, everything put away behind cupboard doors. None of the easy clutter his mother kept on the counter, the cookie jars filled with flour and packages of staples where she could reach them, the pots of miniature cacti, the pictures and lists she kept stuck to the refrigerator and to the walls between hooks bearing limp dish towels and greasy potholders. His mother still lived alone, the house too big for her. The rest of his clothes were there, but he didn't stop by often, they had their differences. She seemed sometimes almost afraid of him, he thought, smiling.

Moving down the hall to the front bedroom he opened the closet, stroked Becky's neatly arranged dresses and fondled them. Morgan's clothes still hung beside hers—as if they thought he was coming home again. He chose a pale blue cotton dress Becky had worn during the trial. Stretching it tight on the hanger he slashed it with his pocketknife, ripped it nearly in half and dropped the pieces on the floor. He'd reached for a second dress when a chill ran through him, a sense that he was watched.

He stared into the shadowed end of the closet where Morgan's clothes hung but saw nothing to threaten him. He looked foolishly up at the shadowed shelf as if someone could hide among the half-dozen shoe boxes and the battered suitcase. Nothing there of course, and no one behind him in the small bedroom. He checked the hall, went through the rest
of the house, then returned. On the dresser stood a cluster of framed photographs, one of Becky and Morgan standing before the house, their hands clasped, and several pictures of the child, from baby to little girl. One by one he smashed the glass, pulled the pictures out and broke the frames. But even as he tore the pictures into small pieces and dropped them on the floor he felt watched again, felt that he was not alone. Nervously he began to open dresser drawers. He removed Becky's panties and bras one at a time, dropped his pants, and rubbed them over himself. She wore only cotton, not silk, but the garments felt smooth and cool. From the next drawer he lifted out nighties and some stockings and did the same with these, leaving the drawers in a tangle ripe with his male scent.

He left Morgan's side of the dresser alone except for the top drawer, which was locked. That interested him, and he was examining the lock when he heard a car door slam. As he stepped to the closed window a faint breeze touched the back of his neck, making him shiver. But when he turned, nothing was there. Outside, a car had parked at the curb. A strange man was heading for the house as Becky's car pulled into the drive, a big man, broad of shoulder, his tie loosened over a white shirt, his gray suit wrinkled. Quickly Falon headed for the kitchen, eased open the bolt on the back door and left, shutting the door softly behind him.

B
ECKY CAME INTO
the house ahead of Quaker Lowe. She made him comfortable in the living room, then went to make some coffee. They had met outside the courthouse where Lowe had spent the morning going over the transcripts of the trial. They hadn't talked there, Lowe had followed her directly home. She was comfortable with Lowe, he seemed to understand clearly her lone battle and her helpless frustration.

He had driven up from Atlanta two days before to talk
with the bank employees who had witnessed the guard's murder and then been beaten and locked in the vault. He was staying at the nicest of Rome's three motels. So far he had seemed content with the five-hundred-dollar retainer she'd given him, which was all the money she had in their savings account. She had seen him for only a few minutes the day he arrived and then again last night when they'd had a simple dinner here at the house, when Caroline had joined them bringing a hot casserole. Now, as she carried the tray of cookies and coffee into the living room, Lowe was reading his copies of the police reports.

“I read the transcripts,” he said, smiling up at her, “and talked the court steno out of a set of her carbons.” He spooned sugar into his coffee. “Last night after I left you I tried again to see Natalie Hooper. There was a light in the living room, but she didn't answer the door. I tried again this morning. She didn't respond and she isn't answering her phone.”

He added cream to the brew and slid three cookies onto his saucer. “It wasn't much good sitting in the car watching the front entrance to the lobby when she could slip out the back. I parked around the corner, borrowed a chair from the building manager, and sat in the hall. When she did come down, she wasn't happy to see me,” Lowe said, smiling.

“I told her we could either go upstairs to her place or talk there in the hall. Reluctantly she took me upstairs. I spent over an hour with her but I didn't get much, just the same lies she told in court. Except for one small discrepancy.

“On the stand, she said Falon left her apartment at two-thirty, the day of the robbery, to go across the street to the corner store. This morning she told me two-fifteen, I got her to say it twice.” He looked evenly at Becky. “I don't see how she could forget what she said on the witness stand, though the woman doesn't seem too swift.

“It may be nothing,” he said, “but it flustered her. I'll talk with the store manager when I leave here. But the biggest
hole in Falon's story,” Lowe said, “is that double entry to the apartment building, the fact that when he left the grocery he could have gone in the front door and out the back. But with no witness, there's nothing to support that. Can you think of anything that might have been overlooked?”

She couldn't. Yet despite that discouragement she had faith in Lowe, he was far more positive than their trial attorney, he left her feeling so much more hopeful. She was thankful he'd taken the case, though she didn't know where she was going to find the money to pay him, and she hated taking it from her mother. Lowe had told her to take her time to make payments, that what he was interested in right now was getting the appeal and winning it.

This morning when she'd met Lowe at the courthouse she had just come from taking the ledgers over to Farley's Dime Store and collecting her last paycheck. Farley would no longer need her services, and he had been pretty cool. He hadn't apologized for letting her go, he had just abruptly fired her. Last Thursday she had lost three accounts including Brennan's Dress Shop, and she'd known Beverly Brennan all her life. She couldn't believe Morgan's trial and conviction had caused such a change among people she'd thought would stand by them. And business at the automotive shop was so bad she wasn't sure she could pay Morgan's mechanic.

Selling the automotive shop would help pay the bills. But would destroy what Morgan had worked so hard to build, destroy another big piece of his life.

Lowe finished his coffee. “You can think of nothing else?” When she shook her head, he stood up to leave. “I want to check the records on Falon, see if the police missed any old outstanding warrants here or out on the coast, maybe in Washington State or while he was in California.” He put out his hand. “Please take care. Doors locked, that kind of thing.” He took both her hands in his, looking at her kindly. “Will you and Sammie be all right? You'll be moving to
Atlanta in a few days, to your aunt's? You'll be near the office then, when we need to talk.”

She handed him the paper where she'd written Anne's address and phone number. “Maybe we'll be lucky, maybe he won't know about Anne. His mother might remember, but they don't get along, I'd guess he seldom sees her. We're taking Mama's car to Anne's. Mine will be here, in Mama's garage.”

On impulse Lowe gave her a big bear hug that made tears start. “I'll call you before I leave Rome, let you know what else I find, and of course I'll call you at Anne's.” He turned and left her, swinging out the front door heading for his car. Getting in and pulling away, he waved. She stood at the front door, tears gushing in spite of herself, watching him drive away.

It was twenty minutes after Quaker Lowe left that she discovered someone had been in the house. She hadn't gone into the bedroom when she got home. Now when she went in to change to a pair of slacks she stopped, looking down at scattered shards of smashed glass, at broken frames and the torn pieces of their family pictures. She spun around, her back to the dresser facing the closet door.

Reaching up, she snatched the dresser key from where it clung to a magnet behind the mirror. She unlocked the dresser drawer and took out Morgan's loaded and holstered .38. Only when she was armed did she open the closet door.

No one there. Her blue dress, Morgan's favorite, lay on the floor torn into rags.

No other clothes had been disturbed but when she turned to the dresser and pulled out the drawers she found her bras and panties tangled in a mess and they smelled; every piece of her more intimate clothing reeked with an ammonialike male smell. Her sweaters, blouses, everything had been pulled out, wadded up, and stuffed back again. Morgan's clothes had not been touched.

Carrying the gun pointed down, her thumb on the hammer, she walked slowly through the rest of the small house, stepping back as she flung open each door: Sammie's room, Sammie's closet, the coat closet, the bathroom, the kitchen. When she checked the service porch, the back door was unlocked. She locked it and called the police.

From now on she'd keep the loaded gun with her. She would train Sammie, she'd gun-proof Sammie just as she knew the children of police officers were trained. She should have done that before. Now she would drill Sammie over and over in the rules for caution and safety, she had no other choice.

Standing at the front window she waited nervously for the police, but then when Sergeant Leonard did arrive, the stern older man made her feel that she had called him out for nothing. Leonard was a beefy man, forty pounds overweight with soft, thick jowls and an attitude of boredom. He made little effort to conceal his amusement even when, entering the bedroom among the broken and torn pictures, she showed him her ruined dress and the wadded clothes in her dresser. When he looked at them, stone-faced, embarrassedly she asked him to smell them. He sniffed her clothes with distaste and gave her another amused look. “Is anything missing?” he said as if she had made up the intrusion, had made this mess herself.

“Nothing's missing that I've found.” She told him she had locked both doors when she left the house that morning, and that just now, when she went through the house, the back door was unlocked, the bolt slid back.